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Inside the agenda of the new office, listed under civil rights, is Obama's promise to support the LGBT community:
1. Expand Hate Crimes Statutes
2. Fight Workplace Discrimination
3. Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples
4. Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage
5. Repeal Don't Ask-Don't Tell
6. Expand Adoption Rights
7. Promote AIDS Prevention
8. Empower Women to Prevent HIV/AIDS
The film was inspired by Tom Hanks' tearful speech when he accepted his 1994 Oscar (for his role in Philadelphia), in which he mentioned his high-school drama coach Rawley Farnsworth, and his former classmate John Gilkerson, "two of the finest gay Americans, two wonderful men that I had the good fortune to be associated with" - unaware that Farnsworth was still 'in the closet'.The film became one of mainstream Hollywood's few attempts at a comedic "gay movie" of its era, and was widely noted at the time for a 10-second kiss between Kevin Kline and Tom Selleck.Guy Damman wrote an article for the Guardian Film Blog, How Gay Films Made Me a Better Man, when he reviewed a new book Out at the Movies: A History of Gay Cinema by Steven Paul Davies in December 2008. He states:
I was, for many years, one of those who looked away. It wasn't that I wanted to, or that there was any genuine homophobia in my attitudes. Yet I simply found I just couldn't quite cope with the sight of Rupert Everett canoodling with Michael Jenn in Another Country, or Daniel Day Lewis getting it on with Gordon Warnecke in My Beautiful Laundrette. Now, though, with the progress of cinema's slow journey out of the closet and the gentle readjustment of my sensibilities - and perhaps those of millions of others, too – I can, with pleasure.Though our focus is on popular culture films, I think it's worth mentioning Celluloid Closet, a 1995 documentary of the history of gays and lesbians in cinema. It was based on the book of the same name by Vito Russo.
ACADEMIC/PROFESSIONAL/EMPLOYEES
CULTURE, HISTORY, AND THE ARTS/MUSIC/CINEMA/RADIO/TV
NEWSPAPERS/JOURNALS/PUBLISHERS
SPORTS/SOCIAL/RECREATION/TRAVEL
What groups are you aware of? Were you surprised at the number of organizations listed within these links?
François Pignon, a very bland sort of man who works as an accountant in a rubber factory, is about to be fired. His new neighbour comes up with an idea to prevent such a thing to happen: he spreads the rumor that he's gay so that the factory management might be afraid they'll be sued for sexual discrimination. Of course, nothing happens as it should, but the changes in François Pignon's life -and other people's too- is drastic!
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The Sierra Club, a group originally founded to protect and preserve wilderness lands, was targeted by anti-immigration groups seeking to take over the Board of Directors. The unsuccessful attempt of a few years ago is described in this Christian Science Monitor article.
Readers of the Nation and other left-leaning magazines may have noticed a new addition to the usual advertisements — full-page advocacy ads by an ad hoc coalition of anti-immigration organizations.
The ads place the blame for traffic and sprawl, frequent villains for urban-oriented members of the left, on population growth, another such villain. The kicker? That population growth is blamed on immigration.
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Now, go forth and explore. Come back and tell us what you've found.Bread and Roses is the not-for-profit cultural arm of New York's Health and Human Service Union, 1199/SEIU. Its 220,000 predominantly Latina and African American women members are employed in all job categories in health care institutions throughout the metropolitan area, New Jersey and Florida.
Bread and Roses was founded in 1979 as a cultural resource for union members and students in New York City who would otherwise have little access to the arts. Special emphasis is given to programs that signify and interpret their history while generating new artistic expression.
Salt Of The Earth (1954) - A full length feature produced by the International Union Of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers which tells the story of the struggling mine workers efforts to gain a safer working environment and higher pay.There's a great list of labor and big business films at changesurfer.com - take a peek at the site and list and see if there's something you recognize, or something you'd like to see. While it's traditional to think of unions in terms of blue collar jobs like garment workers or truck drivers, one of the films reminds us that workers have been exploited in a wide variety of fields - including the outfield. The list includes Eight Men Out, described thusly:
It would be fun to do a course on sports in popular culture films. Interested? For that matter, we could do a series just on baseball in film... There are so many good ones.
Eight Men Out - The loose history, directed by John Sayles, of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal. The players received a pittance and turned to the only source of financial security they could find, the bookies. With stunning performance by John Cusack as the only player who refuses to go along, and a cameo by Studs Terkel.
Grosse Pointe Blank (George Armitage, 1997). Though a case can perhaps be made that a running gag in this film, Dan Aykroyd's attempt to form a union of hit men, underscores the film's portrayal of professional killers as the hired help of the ruling class, that argument is undercut by protagonist John Cusack's anti-union position. The real left-wing content of this film is the subverting of the product placement trend in movies and the solidarity with the Detroit newspaper strike by placing a "No News or Free Press Wanted" sign in a storefront window. - Steve PressCheck out the trailer here.
According to Kevin Brownlow and David Gill's documentary series Unknown Chaplin, the first scenes to be written and filmed take place in what became the movie's second half, in which the penniless Tramp finds a coin and goes for a meal in a restaurant, not realising that the coin has fallen out of his pocket. It was not until later that Chaplin decided the reason the Tramp was penniless was that he had just arrived on a boat from Europe, and used this notion as the basis for the first half. Purviance reportedly was required to eat so many plates of beans during the many takes to complete the restaurant sequence (in character as another immigrant who falls in love with Charlie) that she became physically ill.
The scene in which Chaplin's character kicks an immigration officer was cited later as evidence of his anti-Americanism when he was forced to leave the United States in 1952. In 1998, The Immigrant was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
A fine piece of polemical cinema, Ken Loach's Bread and Roses tells the story of the successful "Justice for Janitors" campaign, which helped establish improved pay and working conditions for the largely Latin American unskilled workforce in Los Angeles. Pilar Padilla plays Maya, who, following a traumatic crossing of the Mexican border, manages to find her older sister Rosa and eventually find work as a janitor. There, she runs into labour organiser Sam (Adrien Brody) when he evades security guards in a comical, Keystone cop-chase through an office building. He persuades her to join his campaign and a tentative romance blossoms.David Edelstein has written a really interesting piece about the film at Slate.com.Bread and Roses is a "Hollywood" movie with a difference, filmed in and around corporate LA but homing in on the lives of the ignored army of grotesquely underpaid, often illegal immigrants who give the area its sheen. At times, the semi-documentary footage of meetings and demos slackens the dramatic pace and it's interesting that the film's strongest scene is when the sceptical Rosa cuts through her sister's pro-union spiel with a devastating speech about the realities of her own life (she had to work as a prostitute). While this an imperfect movie, its political point hits home hard. Brody as Sam in particular brings a streak of fun to the movie.
That bald, Black, half-blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.
His writing is engaging and intelligent. He compellingly shares his personal feelings and observations. Warning: you might not ever want to leave the site. It's awesome place to learn more about how popular culture and history are viewed by someone for whom, as I think comedian Chris Rock put it, every day is Black History Day. His irreverent use of slang and dialect threw me a bit at first, but I had to laugh at his label "Black History Mumf" and general silliness like:"The management wishes to inform you that it is aware that the proper spelling of "colored" is "cullud," and also asks: Please, no drooling on Lena Horne."
As Mark Harris reminds us in his recent book about late 1960s Hollywood, “Pictures at a Revolution,” it was not until the year of the movie’s release that the Warren Court handed down the Loving decision overturning laws that forbade interracial marriage in 16 states; in the film’s final cut there’s still an outdated line referring to the possibility that the young couple’s nuptials could be illegal (as Obama’s parents’ marriage would have been in, say, Virginia). In that same year of 1967, L.B.J.’s secretary of state, Dean Rusk, offered his resignation when his daughter, a Stanford student, announced her engagement to a black Georgetown grad working at NASA. (Johnson didn’t accept it.)Do you remember a time when it was unusual to see an interracial couple? Did you hear racist remarks about such a situation? Do you think prejudicial attitudes have changed completely, or do such couples still face challenges?
Quayle's mangled speech has haunted him for decades. There's even a book entitled What a Waste It Is to Lose One's Mind: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Dan Quayle.
When he addressed the United Negro College Fund, whose slogan is "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," Quayle said: ". . . you take the United Negro college fund model that what a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." The New York Times (June 25, 1989) and at least forty other publications picked up that remark.
Numerous bloggers responded passionately to the story of Naki's long uncredited contributions to science. Here are a few links to posts I found:Dr. Barnard began to acknowledge Mr. Naki's work only after the end of apartheid in 1991. In an interview shortly before his death in 2001, he called Mr. Naki "one of the great researchers of all time in the field of heart transplants."
Col. Clarence Darrow and Col. Wm. Jennings Bryan
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
You can read a New York Times article about one of the premieres of the film, in which organizers denied entry to evolutionary biologist P. Z. Myers. I suppose another way of phrasing it was that he was expelled from the theater...The theory of intelligent design is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the “apparent design” in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations.
“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” rejects the notion that “the case is closed,” and exposes the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who are pursuing legitimate, opposing scientific views to the reigning orthodoxy.
Christians call it the Ichthys or Ichthus, which means fish. You can learn the religious significance by clicking here. The symbol sometimes has a small crucifix inside or the Greek letters for fish, ΙΧΘΥΣ or ΙΧΘΥC.
Or this one, in which Christian creationists respond to evolutionists:
I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.
Niklas Jansson's adaptation of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam depicts the Flying Spaghetti Monster in its typical guise as a clump of tangled spaghetti with two eyestalks, two meatballs, and many "noodly appendages".
